Bezos-Musk Tech Bro Space Race Ignites as Blue Origin Rocket Reaches Orbit

The world’s second richest man has now got a rocket in space alongside the world’s richest man, after Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin rocket entered orbit.

The spacecraft, called New Glenn, passed the Kármán line—the internationally recognised boundary of space—at around 2 a.m. Eastern Time on Thursday after taking off from Cape Canaveral Space Force station in Florida.

The New Glenn Rocket, widely seen as a potential competitor to Musk’s Falcon 9, was due to be blasted into space in the small hours of Monday morning, only for the launch to be called off during the final minutes of the countdown due to unspecified technical difficulties.

But the tech bro space race is now on, after the craft “reached its intended orbit,” according to an X post from the company. This received a congratulatory message from SpaceX founder and CEO, and Bezos’ main space rival, Elon Musk.

Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin Massive New Rocket Launch FlopsSTUCK ON PLANET EARTH

“Congratulations on reaching orbit on the first attempt!” he wrote, tagging the Amazon founder. “Thank you!” Bezos responded, with a folded hands emoji. It wasn’t all success for the Blue Origin team, however. The New Glenn lost its bizarrely named booster “So You’re Telling Me There’s a Chance,” which was due to be safely guided to a landing pad in the ocean.

“We lost the booster during descent. We knew landing the first stage on the first try was ambitious. We’ll learn, refine, and apply that knowledge to our next launch in the spring. We’re thrilled with today’s outcome,” the company said on X.

“I’m incredibly proud New Glenn achieved orbit on its first attempt,” said Dave Limp, CEO of Blue Origin. “We’ll learn a lot from today and try again at our next launch this spring. Thank you to all of Team Blue for this incredible milestone.”

It comes after Bezos insisted that he saw no threat to his space race ambitions from Musk having the ear of the incoming president, Donald Trump. Musk had called on the incoming U.S. government to prioritize his own aspirations for sending a mission to Mars rather than Bezos’ ambitions of launching a second crew to Earth’s moon, following the first landing back in 1969.

“My own opinion is that we should do both—we need to go to the moon and we should go to Mars,” Bezos said in response to questions about prospective changes to NASA’s programs.